Blairism - to permanently hobble public service broadcasting and to put the frighteners on broadcast journalists who might be mildly critical of the government.
After the ousting of Gavin Davies and Greg Dyke, Chair of BBC governors and Director General respectively, the apology offered to the government by acting chairman Lord Ryder was denounced as groveling and demeaning' by as mild a liberal as David Attenbrough.
That we see with Hutton's report social deference, of respect for our superiors, unseen since the 1960s. Among leading parliamentarians it was left to Michael Portillo to demand total independence for the BBC.
In fact, a point made by this journal several times, BBC journalists were on the whole uncritical of the government during the Iraq war. But there are bigger issues at stake. The .... Heads roll as the BBC is brought to heel - including one-time Blairite Greg Dyke vultures have been circling the BBC for years, and leaders of the pack are Rupert Murdoch and leading BskyB executives.
What they want is a reduction of the role of public service broadcasting to that which it has in the United States; an arena for the production of minority interest programmes, with small funds and little chance to make effective mass audience programmes.
Hence the apparently 'high brow' criticisms of the Greg Dyke's role at the BBC claiming too much money was being spent on mass entertainment programmes like Fame Academy, to win the ratings war with ITV.
Rupert Murdoch wants the BBC to be left with the opera and the archeology, pushed out of the ratings wars, and de-gutted as an effective mass broadcaster in Britain and around the world. Anyone who has had the misfortune to recently watch CNN or other North American channels recently knows exactly what this means
The limited voices of criticism and diss we have here on British TV and radio wo be pushed out completely in a Murdochi system. With the BBC marginalised, crit spaces on ITV channels would be un pressure as well.
It is ironic of course that the depar heads of the BBC, Gavin Davies and G Dyke, were put there as loyalist Blairites
Davies, a multi-millionaire from inve ment bankers Goldman Sachs, was amo the first prominent business people to sv behind Blair in the mid 1990s, and ope contacts and support in business circles A never-further rightwing Blairi
chews up and spits out its loyal as the long list of ex-Labour m ters on the back benches reveals
Irony upon irony, all this comes just w Bush's own appointed weapons inspect David Kay, tells Congress that there were weapons of mass destruction. Forget all nonsense about intelligence failings' wt 'must be investigated'. Intelligence agen produced the dodgy dossiers, which.th masters wanted. Andrew Gilligan was rigt
In the last year there have been th great issues, which defined Late Blairin foundation hospitals, the Iraq war and tuit fees.
These issues and the battles around th show the utterly reactionary character of Blairite project. At its heart is the deeper of class inequality and the promotion of so deference and imperial power. Millions people now understand this.
What they need is an effective politi voice to represent them.